


Steel Flowers; Paper Hearts

by ElfMaidenOfLight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Banter, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romance, Teasing, catching feelings, with art from @Kajotko!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight
Summary: In Resistance custody, Hux becomes distracted while completing various repair jobs Rose has tasked him with, rediscovering his love of tinkering and creation in the process.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 39
Kudos: 98





	Steel Flowers; Paper Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @Kajotko for the lovely art.  
> (the full image can be found at the end of this story)

~*~

Hux glanced over at the once-broken gearbox on the workbench before him, re-made and no longer short-circuiting whatever cooling system it had previously been attached to.

_ “Fix it,”  _ she’d said, her tone dancing along the boundary between suggestion and command.

The task was child’s play, but Hux hadn’t told her that. He’d sneered at her back as she left him there in the base’s laboratory. If one could call it such, as it was underground and poorly-lit; damp, dirty.

Poorly- _ funded _ , he’d thought with a sniff. He tidied up the spanners he’d used, pulling them over from where they were strewn about the table.

He’d removed one of the box’s small heat shields, a flap of flimsy durasteel a little longer than his palm. He’d deemed it unnecessary to its improved functionality. He’d  _ upgraded it. _

They should be  _ grateful. _

It had taken him just shy of forty minutes to complete the task. Admittedly not his best time, but he’d been distracted by his own thoughts:

Nervous, fidgety energy that had nowhere to go. It made him shift in his seat, unable to find comfort. The tenuous, maddening nature of his current predicament jittered across the tense pull of his shoulders, down his arms, and into his clenched fists.

That’s why he’d acquiesced to Commander Tico’s little games of repair; his thoughts had to go  _ somewhere.  _ So he could think. So he could plan. Scheme.

The most infuriating part of it was, even as he ran though all the possible ways in which he was going to survive the end of the war and it’s inevitable aftermath, he eventually realized the only thing he could do  _ presently _ was wait. Play their game, and wait.

They hadn’t killed him yet; that was encouraging.

He was a patient man, but still, that didn’t mean he  _ enjoyed  _ waiting _. _

As Hux parsed out all the choices he’d made, trying to discern which one he’d miscalculated enough to land him in the ever-benevolent grip of the Resistance, he rolled the metal sheet tight against itself lengthwise, spiraling it inward like his thoughts. When he’d brought himself back to the present, ripping himself out of memory and self-destruction, the resulting tube of metal was surprisingly snug and strong. It felt good in his hands; weighty and grounded

In any event, he thought with resolute finality, grip tight, ,miscalculation or no, he could not change the past. He could only march forward. 

When Rose had come back hours later, to check his progress, genuinely shocked at the now fully-functioning gear box, Hux had slipped the durasteel rod into the pocket of the black fatigues, smirking smugly at the look on her face.

“That was fast,” she muttered, stepping toward the workbench, seemingly unaware that he was most dangerous at close quarters. At least, when his finger wasn’t being bitten off.

Well, he thought, hand tensing around the sharp dagger of metal in his pocket,  _ now _ he had a weapon.

But even now, he could still remember the bite of her teeth grinding into the meat of his finger, her lips pressed fiercely into the leather of his glove. He tried to shake it off, but it made his skin prickle. Even after all this time, Hux couldn’t seem to forget the feeling of her mouth on him.

Hux froze.

Wait. The feeling of her  _ what? _

Rose crowded towards him, unaware of the General’s current misfiring thoughts, how he tensed further the closer she got.

“Scooch,” she said, invading his space so he had to step away, a little jerky in his movements. The side-step pulled his hand back from his pocket.

Rose said nothing; merely took the gearbox to study it with the appraising eye of a mechanic. .

“Perhaps I need a real challenge,” he quipped loftily, watching her mouth press into a thin line even as she regarded him with muddled mistrust and fascination. Eventually, she settled on a sly smile of her own, which took him by surprise.

“Maybe you do,” she conceded, humming slightly as she turned the gearbox over in her hand, still smiling cryptically. It made his overconfident expression crack by a degree.

“I’m sure I can think of something,” she flicked her gaze up to meet his, pinning him. “General.”

It was a naked taunt, designed to rile him up and disarm him, but Hux only felt a sudden spark of contest. It stoked a long-dormant need to rise, to meet, to  _ exceed _ .

It had been so very long since someone had tested him by way of his mechanical abilities.

The thought thrilled him. 

The next day, she had presented him with an X-Wing actuator, or part of one; namely the bit that housed the exhaust converter. It was, once again, a terribly outdated piece of machinery.

To his horror, it appeared as if some fool had overclocked the motor without commensurately improving the heat displacement.

The small metal flaps that tempered the output of the exhaust fan he summarily removed. To offset the radiant heat, he crimped some of the leftover metal into tiny, raised heat sinks for the thermoelectric cooler.

When he was finished, Hux checked the digital chronometer on the datapad Rose had given him.

Twenty-seven minutes. Not bad.

He drummed his fingers upon the worktable, lounging back in his chair, letting his mind and his gaze wander around the workbench.

He wondered: when Tico saw his handiwork, would she wear that delightfully pleased expression she’d accidentally let slip in his presence?

Idly, his attention fell on the discarded exhaust fan flaps that had become slightly bent during their removal.

They were small, certainly smaller than his palm, rounded on one side and pointed on the other, like an overlarge teardrop. With the way they had creased, up from the rounded bottom, he thought they looked a little bit like leaves.

He huffed slightly, pulling the bits of metal toward him, taking them to task with the spanner pliers. It was mindless fiddling, but when he was done, they did sort of look a little more like bits of foliage; the way he had bent over the edges and pushed thin-lined veins into the soft metal.

There was something... alluring about it, he thought, rolling one of the metal leaves in his fingers so it twirled, its surface catching the light and twinkling like a star.

Space...

Perhaps it was a side effect of being planet-side for so long, cloistered among more green than he could remember seeing since... well, since a very long time ago.

With almost detached interest, he added the two little scraps to the metal rod he’d fashioned the day before. When he attached them, it looked like a little, silver vine...

The pneumatic door opened just as he was slipping his little project into the pocket of his coat, slung over the back of the chair.

Rose had only waited a few hours before checking on him this time. Stepping through the threshold, and without a word, like the draw of seeing his latest project was of top priority, she strode quickly forward.

Hux eyed her warily as she slid up next to him at the workbench, so absorbed in seeing her reaction that he forgot the usual tension that thrummed through his body in her presence.

She plucked up the actuator, turning it over. Pausing, she scratched a nail down the raised heat sinks with a tiny, tinkling sound.

Her lips parted, eyes blinking wide before she turned her attention to him where he was standing in stiff-backed parade rest.

He was unprepared for what raced inside him at that look of hers.

“This is such a good idea!” She rattled the actuator, indicating the small tines of metal he’d fashioned. 

Was it pride? At her recognizing his abilities?

Rose slapped a palm over her forehead, eyes shining. “We wouldn’t need to purchase  _ any _ new components with this design!”

Perhaps it was satisfaction, at her technological eye.

“This is genius, Hux!”

Pleasure, at her delight?

No, surely not.

What did he care what she thought about his work? These projects were trivial and mundane at best. He could have implemented such design augmentations by the time he was twelve. There was no reason she--

“--take you, Hux? Hux? Hey!” 

He drew in a breath that was embarrassingly audible, gaze refocusing on the woman before him.

Rose cocked her head, a look of... well, not annoyance, maybe-- intrigue?

“How long did this take you?”

He swallowed, clearing his throat, adopting a deflective sneer.

“It matters little, does it not? You’ve got what you wanted.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well,  _ excuse me  _ General. Can’t even take a compliment, geez...” she muttered, studying the actuator so close her nose was almost touching it.

“Compliment?”

“Did you change the chip frequency in here, too? What, by... eighteen-point-three?” Rose whistled low, enthralled.

Now it was Hux’s turn to be impressed, a warm, reckless feeling flooding into the pit of his stomach.

He cocked his chin up, just so, smiling self-satisfyingly.

“Tell me, Tico, did you hack into the First Order database as a child and teach yourself mechanics? Or was it merely trial and error?”

“Yeah, sorta. Well, both, actually.”

Hux’s brain stuttered to a stop.

“Wait. Really?”

She shrugged, still studying the component. “I mean, I guess. Paige and I hacked into one of the oredigger’s hard drives, but we decided to riffle around in some of the tech files while we were in there. We found some old holonet backup of these volumes from this school or academy or something.”

A cold feeling tickled at the back of Hux’s brain, but before he could inquire further, she sighed, hefting the actuator, adding, “So, obliviously we’ve been underutilizing your skills.”

“As I said,” he volleyed back, gesturing vaguely at his work space. He was glad for the diversion from the electric jolt that coursed through his core as she praised him, “if you could supply a real challenge...”

Rose snorted, but it was with a slanting, feisty smile —as if she were enjoying their banter.

“Alright, smart-ass, you just wait.”

The amused expression on his face froze.

No one had  _ ever _ spoken to him like  _ that. _

He was too astonished by her absolutely  _ audacious  _ cheek to even begin to be cross with her , or flinch away before her finger jabbed briefly into his chest.

“Third time’s a charm,” she smirked, eyes glittering with challenge.

Hux’s hands curled into fists.

A few days later, once again allowed out of his quarters and led to the base’s dingy lab, Hux was greeted by a starfighter’s large plasma-filter laying in wait upon his workbench... beside a grinning, satisfied-looking Commander Tico.

Seeing her expression, he couldn’t help but smile thinly back.

“This is much larger than an X-Wing actuator,” he muttered, unable to hide his real interest in the new project she’d brought him. He moved toward the table, chin caught between his thumb and forefinger. “What is the problem?”

“Oh, you’ll figure it out,” Rose crooned. “I’ll give you...” she checked her chronometer, “an hour. How about that?”

Hux looked over from where he lay his hand upon the filter housing.

“Instituting a time constraint? Have you simply been giving me hoops to jump through for your own amusement, Tico?”

“I thought you wanted a challenge,” she replied, feigning hurt. “Well,” she made a big show of starting a countdown on her time piece, shooting him a sly expression. “Guess you better get to work, huh?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Have fun,” she said, waving lazily back over her shoulder as she strolled out the pneumatic door.

Hux watched her leave with renewed interest, pondering why her teasing made his blood run so very hot.

Even when she’d been on her knees, moments from death, she’d never cowered before him. She challenged him and reveled in it; she could match his barbs and seemed a worthy opponent in technical skill.

Hux glanced over the large filter, lost in thought, gears turning within his mind, thoughts of a certain, strangely irremovable thorn in his paw imposing upon his attempts to diagnose the physical problem before him.

He shifted, trying to focus, the weight in his pocket making him feel off-balance. Slowly, he emptied his pockets of the metal bits he’d nicked from the lab, laying them out before him.

Eventually, he started to work on loosening and removing a few of the filter’s internal parts. Namely, the thin shielding ribbon that wound its way around the coupling clamps. The strip tore as he removed it like thin, silver flimsy. Like petals.

Something deep in his chest constricted, and  _ tugged _ .

It was a memory- no- a vague feeling he’d felt before, before the war had consumed him and survival and power had become his only objective. There, staring at the scraps of metal, he was reminded of his youth, when the simple act of creation, of taking broken, useless components and making something new, had been the thing in which he had taken so much joy.

He wondered, vaguely, if his and Rose’s tinkering habits had been similar in their youth. He pictured odds and ends and spare parts scattered around her messy room, a mirrored opposite to his own tidy, methodical crafting as he sat alone in his quarters, blocking out the fear and the loneliness and his father’s cruelty with broken mouse droids and recycled terminal components, heavy with the promise of creation.

Similarly, the plasma-filter before him now was the type of challenge he’d been waiting for; just the thing for him to sink his teeth into, but...

It was not as intriguing as the scrap metal, no longer little shreds of dinged-up metal and cast-off parts. Instead, they were components of his own design. An image in his head he could not be rid of. Pieces with which he could create whatever he envisioned.

Writing code was better, but this was... different. Satisfying. He could feel the parts in his hands. As he worked the metal together, he lost his gloves, one by one, so he could grip the delicate metal and bend it  _ just so. _

The medium was unforgiving, jagged edges catching his skin and roughing his knuckles, but despite the occasional annoying nick on his finger, it was... relaxing. The first bit of fun he could remember having in... decades, honestly.

He was so absorbed in crafting, that when an hour passed and Rose returned, he barely heard the door slide open.

Rose stepped inside, but her voice died before she could speak, halted by the sight of General Hux, sans coat and bent over something in his hands. She couldn't tell exactly what he was working on, but his profile was clear, his eyebrows pulled in with a slight frown of concentration, drawing his face into a serious, but thoughtful expression.

He looked younger, or maybe just less frigid.

She was surprised he hadn’t noticed her come in yet...

Her gaze fell on the mostly untouched plasma-filter with some consternation.

“Hux!”

Hux visibly jolted out of his seat at her sudden voice, standing quickly.

“Tico!”

She came forward and gestured at the filter.

”What the hell! You didn’t even  _ try?” _

Hux opened his mouth but she cut him off.

“What’s  _ that?” _ Rose immediately spied the little project he  _ had  _ been working on.

He took a step or two towards her, and to the side, blocking it somewhat from view. She did not balk at his nearness, but her eyes did widen considerably as she had to tilt her head back slightly to look up at him.

Her expression of incredulity quickly morphed into suspicion.

“What are you hiding, Hux?”

He felt heat creep up his neck.

“It’s none of your--”

“Is it a weapon?” she asked sharply, drawing back from him.

Surprise darted through him, followed quickly by a strange roil of hurt.

_ “ _ Step away from the workbench Hux,” she leveled a narrow, angry look at him.

“Tico,” he tried, unsure of why he was so desperate to assure her that she wasn’t in any danger.

_ Fool,  _ a voice inside him chastised, _ the first time she ever saw you, you sentenced her to die.  _

But circumstances were different now, weren’t they? Surely she knew that, this time, she held all the cards.

If she thought he’d been crafting a weapon, which admittedly  _ had _ been his first instinct, then surely she would lock him back in his cell and their little game would be over.

“Poe was right,” she went on, taking another step backward, her hand twitching towards the blaster on her hip. “I should never have let you within an  _ inch _ of any of this.”

“ _ Commander,”  _ he tried, emphatic.

She took out her blaster, though it was pointed toward the ground.

“Hand it over, General. Whatever it is.”

Hux growled, eyes rolling to the ceiling before he turned back towards the bench.

Rose took a sharp inhale, her blaster rising, but when he pivoted back around, it was no weapon he was holding.

“Is- what is that?” she demanded, a little breathless from the spike of adrenaline. Her arm lowered by a degree and Hux gave her a dubious, hedging look.

“I had intended to work on the filter,” he admitted with real honesty, “however...”

Rose crept closer, holstering her blaster, fingers reaching out despite herself.

“I suppose I became a bit preoccupied,” he finished as he held up the shining metal flower. “I’m... unsure of what came over me.”

A wondrous look came over Rose’s face. “Hux, you- you made this? From scrap metal?” She reached out, almost touching one of the delicate, crimped petals, but stopped short, her other hand pressing to her chest, truly impressed and surprised.

She noticed then that his hands were bare, the first time she’d seen him without his gloves. His fingers looked a little roughed up from working with the sharp material.

“It’s remarkable,” she said, tracing the outline of the flower’s shape without touching.

He made a noncommittal noise, moving his fingers so the object spun, catching and throwing the light.

“It was simply a project to pass the time, nothing more. A dalliance.”

Rose shook her head. “No way. It’s  _ art.  _ What inspired you?”

Hux was no longer looking at the metal flower, but at Rose, and at the warm, open expression that had taken over her soft, plush features. He swallowed, jaw clenching, and pressed the flower into her outstretched hand before he could think any better of it.

She looked startled, but her fingers closed around the stem all the same, resting briefly over his before he pulled away.

“Take it,” he said, his easy tone masking the thrumming in his chest.

Rose’s eyes darted up and down and back again.

“What? I can’t. It’s- it’s-”

“It’s yours,” he finished.

Rose gaped at him before she smiled, marveling down at the flower in her hand.

Her tender delight, at  _ his _ creation, made his stomach flip and his pride flare hot before he could wrestle them under control. It was so small a thing, her gazing upon him with rapt fascination and commendation at what he’d created, rather than with horror and disgust at the things he’d destroyed; he found it bloomed within him a foreign, pleasant feeling. 

“It’s very beautiful, Hux,” she said, cradling the flower like some perfect, precious thing.

“Yes.” He watched her, drinking in her expression as warmth unfurled within the hollow of his chest, curling into every inch of him. “It is.”

by Kajot @kajotko

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Brit Hux-Tico (birchwoods01) & the_desk_fairy for being betas on this little fic! I've always had this image of Hux giving Rose a metal flower in my head, so I had to write it! And I'm so lucky to have a piece of art from Kajot to help bring this idea to life! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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